About

Guerilla Restaurant. Exploration. Food. Photography. Risk. Passion.

The Mist Project is a nomadic food experience created by Chef Gavin Baker. The Project explores various food cultures from around the world with the goal of recording the many stories, customs and ingredients of global tribes and reinterpreting traditional foods in creative and modern ways.

Currently:

We’ve been honored by the number of emails we’ve been receiving from Mist:SaltLake diners asking about Mist’s plans for 2013. While we regret to inform everyone that there are currently no Mist events planned for the USA in 2013, we have been working on some exciting new projects.

Gavin has once again set up shop with a full test kitchen in his apartment, this time creating cuisine for Little Hunter in Melbourne, Australia. The good news? Gavin’s food will now be available 6 days a week for lunch and dinner. More good news? Gavin’s slated to open several additional restaurants throughout 2013-2014 in Australia.

But what does this mean for Mist? Since its inception in 2008 (and some earlier iterations Gavin created as far back as 2000) Mist has lived up to its name: a phenomenon that appears and disappears when conditions permit. While we can’t make any promises, we’re hoping October brings news of another Mist sighting down under.

We took a break from Balinese food on a recent Sunday afternoon and enjoyed a treat from South Sulawesi… all while in a backyard of Bali. A group of Torajan natives were kind enough to invite us to join one of the most unique food traditions we’ve ever seen : pa’piong.

Pa’piong is traditionally served during the enormous funeral ceremonies of the Torajan people. We thought we may have misunderstood when our Torajan friends described funeral practices in their culture - events that included over 5,000 people sometimes and cost the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But indeed, the tradition of ushering a loved one into the afterlife is celebrated more extravagantly in Toraja than any other funeral tradition we’re familiar with.

You don’t have to be a chef to imagine how impossible feeding 5,000 people for several days (or weeks) would be, but luckily pa’piong is an elegant solution for sustainably feeding unbelievable crowds.

We start by foraging tools for cooking. Bamboo is chopped down and sectioned off using a machete. Low hanging palm frawns are cut and used to shade the “kitchen.” Banana leaves are harvested.

Mist:Bali dinner prep underway currently … and right after dinner we’re setting sail on Silolona. A few days at sea and in Komodo before we’re back on the grid. Expect photos and updates then! Bon appetit and bon voyage!!